Music suggestions

The new Dylan album is beyond words. I like Dylan, occasionally I really like Dylan, but I haven't really bothered with any of his recent records. Modern Times is worth the bother. It's fucking fantastic.

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin is, besides a great band name, one of the best blog-hyped bands I've run into so far. If you've been burned by Tapes 'N Tapes and other bands that get blown out of proportion by Stereogum and the like, well, join the club, but SSLYBY is the real deal.

Snowden and Slowlands are also very good, though they've been blogged about less. The new Roots album is also very good. I heard a story that Jay-Z came into a recording session and demanded some of that "artsy shit" that The Roots are so good at and not any "ClearChannel songs." The Roots delivered.

I'm From Barcelona got a really good review from Pitchfork, which can sometimes be a death sentence in the indie community, but the praise is well-deserved. Barcelona writes incredible pop songs that capture the same "I'm so precocious" spirit also found in Boy Least Likely To, but combines it with a kitchen-sink, gang-sing type aesthetic that's sort of reminiscent of Architecture in Helsinki.

Aloha's Some Echoes, however, is probably my favorite album of the year so far. It came out a few months ago, perhaps, but I'm still listening to it regularly.

Finally, the upcoming Decemberists' album, The Crane Wife, is a masterpiece. It is musically so smooth, so rich (without being lush), that it overwhelms the lyrics. That's hard to do if your lyricist is Colin Meloy. I listened to this album in awe.